DESCRIPTION (from the application): This application requests five years of continuing support for graduate research training in Dermatology. During the past five years we have evolved a model which has been successful and which we will continue. Specifically, trainees receive two years of clinical training in the Dermatology Department and then enter a research training program that is expected to last long enough to ensure that the trainee is able to compete successfully for independent funding of the trainee's own scientific investigation. The first two to three years of training that are supported by this grant are taken under the direction of a mentor selected by the trainee in consultation with the program director and associate director. Trainees are encouraged to seek training in a basic science department laboratory so that they may learn new strategies and insights that they may later apply to the development of new knowledge about human skin and its diseases.